FREN 330 – L’Algérie française, la France algérienne

Philippe Brand
Fall 2022
M & W 3-4:30pm

This course explores the complex and still unresolved legacies of the French colonization of Algeria (1830-1962) and the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) through close analyses of fiction, art, music, web-documentaries, podcasts, and film. Those histories continue to resonate and inform political debate and notions of personal identity in France and Algeria to the present day. Among the works that we will explore, we will begin with (Algerian-born) Albert Camus’s 1942 classic L’Étranger (which is set in colonial French Algeria), followed by Kamel Daoud’s postcolonial novel from 2015,Meursault, contre-enquête, written in response to and as a reimagining of Camus’s novel from an Algerian perspective. We will then turn our attention to Assia Djebar’sFemmes d’Alger dans leur appartement(1980), which focuses on women’s lives in Algeria in the past and in the present. Finally, Franco-Algerian author Leïla Sebbar’s novel La Seine était rouge (1999) explores the present-day legacies of the tangled web of the past. Along with these four primary works, we will also examine the canonical film La bataille d’Algerby Gillo Pontecorvo and the award-winning and controversial films Indigènes and Hors-la-loi by Rachid Bouchareb, in addition to many other works. This course is taught entirely in French, and is cross-listed as an elective course for the MENA minor.

Please contact Professor Philippe Brand at pbrand@lclark.edu with any questions!